Le portrait d'un Carthaginois

Abstract

Hanno, the protagonist of Plautus' play Poenulus, is a Carthaginian. Hanno embodies the historic enemy of Rome. He is a comic, complex, and unusual character, due to both his physical and to his behavioural peculiarities, these last ones considered as emerging from his racial dowry. Some of his ethnic peculiarities, normally disregarded, could serve to the accomplishment of a right cause. This is the case of his linguistic and judicial abilities of which he makes use in his endeavour to rebuild his lost family. The success of the Carthaginian is not obtained through "national" cunning; it is obtained through a quality which the Romans consider typical for themselves, i. e. divinely rewarded piety. Plautus is far from constructing an attitude which expresses national resentments against the enemies. Instead of this, the writer exploits the humorous and expressive potential of a character towards whom he has sympathetic and quite admiring feelings.